Poems
Poem 4: 'The Beggar Woman' (Pre-1900)
Extract
A gentleman in hunting rode astray,
More out of choice, than that he lost his way:
He let his company the hare pursue,
For he himself had other game in view:
A beggar by her trade; yet not so mean,
But that her cheeks were fresh, and linen clean.
‘Mistress,’ quoth he, ‘and what if we two should
Retire a little way into the wood?’
She needed not much courtship to be kind,
He ambles on before, she trots behind;
For little Bobby, to her shoulders bound,
Hinders the gentle dame from ridding ground.
He often asked her to expose; but she
Still feared the coming of his company.
Says she, ‘I know an unfrequented place,
To the left hand, where we our time may pass,
And the meanwhile your horse may find some grass.’
Thither they come, and both the horse secure;
Then thinks the squire, I have the matter sure.
The Poet: William King (1663-1712)
Little is known about William King except that he was educated at Christ Church College Cambridge, and made a living as a lawyer and judge while writing occasional satires and comic verse, most of which were published anonymously.
The Poem
'The Beggar Woman' is written in the tradition of the street or broadside ballads, printed stories in verse that were sold cheaply and passed around for pleasure, often dealing with popular scandals and murder stories. In a time before the popular press and television chat shows, these ballads satisfied a need for entertaining stories, a tradition that has deep roots in oral traditions of storytelling and wandering minstrels. The poem tells a traditional tale of a poor but attractive beggar woman, accosted by a local squire who intends to use her for his own sexual pleasure and then abandon her to her fate - something which the beggar woman has clearly experienced before, judging by the child strapped to her back. Appearing to go along with his wishes, she leads him to 'an unfrequented place' where she deftly turns away his crude advances, using the baby as an excuse - 'Should you be rude, and then should throw me down, / I might perhaps break more backs than my own'. When the squire comes up with a solution to the inconvenient problem of the child and offers to strap the child to his own back, she turns the tables on him in a final twist, which sees her literally leaving him 'holding the baby'.
What Simon Armitage Said
'"The Beggar Woman" is a popular ballad type poem that doesn't get into any of these fantastic extended metaphors. It tells a story. Originally the rhymes in a ballad were so that you could remember them.
‘"The Beggar Woman" has more in common with John Cooper Clarke's poetry than it does with Andrew Marvell. It wants to cause a bit of a stir, a bit of a flutter... you can imagine it in the music-hall tradition. It's got a popular voice and it tells a tale.'
Simon Armitage - Passwords 1998
